


Life to a Soul

by Zelos



Series: The Burial of the Guns [3]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Innocents of war, Loss, Loss of Innocence, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelos/pseuds/Zelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Give me my son back.” The man's voice cracked. “Tell me what you did to him. Tell me where he is. I just...I want David back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life to a Soul

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to [Lia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia), who has obligingly answered all my anon squee/venting/questions about Animorphs on Tumblr over the past several weeks despite hating David. I apologize for treating your Tumblr like a personal squee journal. *sheepish*
> 
> Also a shoutout to the Tumblr Animorphs fandom as a whole, for cheerfully contributing to plot bunnies and schadenfreude in general.

“What's new today, Wetherbee?” Marco didn't look up from the TV.

“Just the usual, sir. The courier dropped off the draft contract for your new show. I got another four requests for interviews. There is the usual fanmail...oh.” Wetherbee paused in counting the stack. “...and those letters, sir. Six of them, today.”

Marco looked up. “Remind me again what it's about?”

“Well, if one overlooks the typical death-threat, rant-and-rave part, the man—Kevin—is demanding to know what you did to his son, David.”

Marco froze for the briefest moment, then relaxed, mask back in place. “Toss it in with the fanmail, would you, Wetherbee? Oh, and bring me another Coke.”

 

“Cass?” Ronnie glanced up from the papers he was reading. “Do you know anyone named David, by any chance?”

Her heart skipped a beat, purely by instinct, then calmed. David really was a very popular name. She frowned, searching her memory. “I don't...think so? Wait, isn't the new guy in accounting named David?”

Ronnie shook his head. “Nope, not that guy. There's some guy named Kevin...” he peered down at a scrap of paper he'd scribbled on, then shook his head, giving up on his handwriting. “Kevin something. Anyway, he's been calling like six times a day demanding to talk to you about someone named David. It's getting to the point Julie doesn't want to pick up the phone anymore.”

Cassie's heart flat-out stopped for a long, terrifying moment, then began beating triple-time.

“Cass?” Ronnie peered at her in concern, his paperwork forgotten. “You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“F-fine,” she said after a moment, mouth dry. “Just...he reminded me of someone I used to know.”

 

He was being followed. It was hard to tell, given the entourage that followed him, but Marco had long since learned to trust his paranoid instincts—even if they were a little rusty from disuse.

But yes, he was being followed from a distance. Somewhere beyond the cameramen and screaming fangirls he could...almost feel someone watching him. Like hawk on a mouse.

Marco wasn't very concerned—not for his _safety_ , anyway. There wasn't a man alive who'd want to challenge a gorilla (or a wolf, a rhino, a Hork-Bajir) to a duel. He's been through enough battles that even if the man had a gun or a knife, he'd be hard-pressed to get in a swipe before Marco'd flatten him.

But he was threatening. And oh, after the war, Marco was so _done_ with threats.

“...it looks like you've built a very successful life after the war, Marco. Well-deserved, of course.” The interviewer consulted his notes briefly. “Has it been hard to adjust at all? I mean, you were all soldiers, and you know what they say about soldiers and war...”

“Oh, it has its ups and downs,” Marco answered glibly. “Mostly ups, y'know, rich and famous and all. But you do have the odd whacko here or there.” He stared meaningfully at the camera. “But they won't try anything. I mean...I'm _Marco the Animorph._ ” His mouth twitched, just on the side of warning. “Who do you know that'd want to wrestle a gorilla? They'd _regret_ messing with me.”

 

He called Cassie. “Hey, have you been...getting any weird calls lately? Letters? Anything?”

She paused for a moment. “You too? Kevin? David's father?”

Well, shit. “Yeah. He's letter bombing all of us, I suppose. It's a good thing Jake doesn't read his mail.”

Another pause. “Only a matter of time before he shows up in person, right?”

Marco laughed. “Seriously? He'd want to take on a tiger?” Never mind that Jake hadn't morphed since...well. Since. “Or a polar bear?”

“Maybe he would. How many Hork-Bajir did he stand up to that day? You were there.”

Marco stopped laughing.

 

During the trial of Visser One, all the witnesses were escorted to their individual hotel rooms by a wall of heavily-armed security guards and intelligence agents. They even escorted the Andalites; Ax had looked puzzled, Alloran indifferent, and the third Andalite, Salawan, looked mildly affronted at the treatment.

On the third day of the trial, just as the trial was adjourning and the guards were lining up for escort, one of Jake's guards broke rank, spun around and grabbed Jake by the shoulders.

There were about eighty guns pointed at him in the blink of an eye.

“Let him go!” someone shouted. The man ignored them. Jake stared at him blankly.

“You _bastard_ ,” the man gritted out. One of his hands was missing a finger, lopped off cleanly by an Andalite tail-blade.

Marco's heart sank.

<They will not shoot with Jake so close,> Ax said privately to him and Cassie. Ax was edging closer, inch by inch, tail arched and ready.

Maybe the man saw. But he didn't care. The security was closing in too, and he didn't reach for his own firearm. All his attention was on Jake, the leader of the Animorphs.

“Where is David? _Where is my son?_ ”

In an instant, Jake's face changed from puzzlement to dreaded disbelief.

Cassie turned chalk-white.

The man shook Jake like a rag doll, tears running down his face. Jake didn't resist, having basically turned to stone.

Someone tackled them both, having reached the conclusion that the man wasn't trying to kill. The three went down in a tangled heap. In seconds, people rushed in; some pulled Jake to his feet while others restrained the offender, guns trained the entire time. The terse silence turned into an uproar.

Jake just kept staring at the man. And people were shouting in the background about security, but all Marco could hear—ringing in his head, or maybe Kevin just kept saying it—was that singular line: _“Where is my son?”_

Marco fished out his phone and began writing a letter to his publicist.

 

“I had—have—a son,” the man grated in the TV, fury and tears striping his face. “I don't know what happened to him. I don't know if he's still alive. He found the blue box. And then the Yeerks showed up along with the rest of the _Animorphs_ , and I got taken, my wife got taken, and my son fucking _disappeared_. For his safety, but now? War's _over_.

“Give me my son back.” The man's voice cracked. “Tell me what you did to him. Tell me where he is. I just...I want David back.”

The interviewer patted his knee, before turning to the screen and adding, “we have not had official statements from either Cassie or Jake. Marco's agent has released a statement saying only 'we do not know what—”

Marco shut off the TV.

 

Julie all but crashed into Cassie's office, nearly knocking over Ronnie, who'd been drawing flowcharts on the whiteboard.

“Julie? What—oh,” Ronnie steadied her, “is it that guy again?”

“He's _here_ ,” Julie babbled, clinging to Ronnie's arm like a lifeline. “I don't even know how he found us—I mean, Cassie's changed offices four times—but he found us anyway, and he's _here_. Said he's not leaving until he talks to Cassie, and—”

Ronnie moved for the door. “I'll go talk to—”

“No,” Cassie cut in. “I'll talk to him.”

“Cass, you sure? I mean, he—”

“I'm the one he _wants_ to talk to, right?” She smiled a plastic smile at them both. “You two stay here.”

Kevin was, indeed, waiting at the front desk; the staff had all evacuated, and more than a few gave her nervous looks as she walked past them. However, he was not hysterical, which was surprising given how he dared to interrupt Visser One's trial. He was just there...waiting.

He spotted her, and startled slightly; she cut right through him before he could speak.

“Kevin, right? I'm Cassie. But you know that already.” Cassie cocked her head and looked him up and down. “I know what you're here for.”

Kevin pulled off his sunglasses to stare at her in the eyes. He was trembling.

Cassie took a deep breath. She was afraid, in a very different way than she was used to. Countless battles with Taxxons and Hork-Bajir and Visser One's array of terrifying morphs had inundated her with so much fear she had figured nothing human would scare her anymore. But, staring into Kevin's bloodshot eyes, she was afraid.

“Meet me tomorrow at the McDonald's by Smythe and Georgia. 3 PM. I'll tell you what you want to know. In the meantime...stop terrorizing my colleagues, and my friends.”

Kevin stared at her for a long moment, then turned and walked away without a word.

“Don't draw attention,” she called after him.

He didn't even slow down.

 

She met him at the McDonalds. As she requested, he wore sunglasses and a baseball cap, mutilated hand stuffed into his jacket; he was near unrecognizable, slouched in his booth. For her part, she wore a hat, her own sunglasses, a button down shirt, and a skirt. She figured the last part would make the ultimate disguise; _Cassie_ did not wear _skirts_.

Rachel would've killed to see her in a skirt. Rachel would've killed for her to even _own_ a skirt. She refused to think too much about that part.

Kevin looked like he wanted to hit her. But he took a deep breath and said, in a very level, non-hysterical voice, “Thank you for coming to see me.”

She remembered that he used to be secret service. Maybe he still was. It explained how he was so good at ferreting information. She wondered if he ever disappeared other people for a living.

“Where is your wife?” she asked instead. David's mother should hear this too. She should know, if he was going to.

“My wife had been in the Yeerk Pool complex,” he said flatly. “When you and your friends blew it up.”

Cassie flinched.

“You kids cost me a lot. My house, my wife, my finger...” He waved the mutilated hand in her face with the manic, forced calm that came just before hysteria. “Less than others, I know. But cost all the same.” A sharp, trembling breath. “Tell me where David is. _Tell me what you've done to my son_.”

“I have a very difficult story to tell you regarding you son, sir.” Kevin opened his mouth. Cassie talked right over him, “I know you have a lot of questions, but you have to hear me out— _without_ interrupting me. Because, believe it or not, Kevin, this hasn't been easy for us, either. Now, listen to me very carefully...”

She told him everything. How they drafted David after the disaster with the Yeerks. How David had been eager to prove himself but too cowardly to fight. How he wanted to sell them out to bargain for his family's life. How, when even that failed, David went after the Animorphs themselves.

Kevin said nothing. But midway through Cassie's speech, he began to cry. When she'd finished, he pulled off his sunglasses to stare at her again. His eyes were as red as blood.

“So...he's a rat.” His voice was choked, dull. “He'll live a rat, die a rat.”

David _was_ a rat—literally and figuratively. She nodded.

He stared at her for a long, harrowing moment; Cassie suddenly has the awful mental image of this man, David's father, keeping his son as a pet. Rats were common pets, and this way he'd have his son back—in a sense—and his son wouldn't be at the mercy of every hawk, owl and cat out there... He'd feed him, clean the cage, and in the meanwhile both of them would be dying by millimetres every single day...

From the look on his face, Kevin was thinking the same thing. Cassie felt sick...but probably less so than she would have, a year or three ago.

“You don't know where he is.” It was a whisper.

She shook her head. “We...really don't. Only Rachel did. And...well...”

Kevin still said nothing. But he sagged in his seat, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, like he'd been hollowed out. Despite herself, Cassie reached over and squeezed his hand—the one with the missing finger.

“I'm very sorry,” she whispered.

And then she rose out of her seat and headed for the exit, her skirt swishing with every step.


End file.
